


The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness

by thesilvergoddess



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Big fucking whoops, F/F, Self-cest, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 08:29:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12577760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilvergoddess/pseuds/thesilvergoddess
Summary: Max Caulfield keeps denying what's happened to her, and it's eating her away.





	The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> Request for bhsdesk!

_ Max. Never Maxine. _

She’d been telling people that for years, but why? She’d told herself that she wanted people to know her as Just Max, but that always devolved into a series of nicknames that she couldn’t get away from - Max Factor, Super Max, Mad Max - but none of those were as bad as Maxipad. It made her feel a little weird sometimes; these days, she slipped out of reality so often that life seemed to blur together, but she could deal with it. She could always deal with a little more pushing, a little more egging on, a little more  _ goading _ . She could always handle one more person putting their little touch on the way they perceived her. She could always handle one more nickname and one more attribution.

...

Okay, maybe she wasn’t dealing with college as well as she thought she was. 

This was the third night without sleep.

The powers had never really gone away. It was more that she’d just stopped using them as much after the whole “cerebral hemorrhage” thing.

Mostly, she had nightmares.

Lots of nightmares.

Some of them were about dying. Some of them were about Mark  _ fucking _ Jefferson. Some of them were of the dark room. 

Most of them were about Chloe.

 

_ Max. Never Maxine. _

 

“Chloe?”

Chloe rolled over, her eyes open in an instant, and the moonless night let starlight illuminate her face. One side of her nose had a little crease on it from the way she slept on her side with her cheek all squished up. 

“You okay?” Her voice was much less alert than her eyes. She wasn’t a light sleeper, but she always heeded Max’s calls in the night. 

“Thinking again,” was all Max could say. Her voice felt like it was squeaking out of a very narrow, very tight tube. 

“Mmm…” Chloe replied, scooting a little closer. “Want me to hold you?”

Max paused for a long second. “No.”

“Wanna just… smush foreheads together or something…?” Chloe’s voice was starting to get quieter before her pauses, and Max knew she was about fifteen seconds from sleeping again.

Max nodded, feeling a bit like just under her sternum would explode like in Alien, letting out all of her anxieties in a weird blob of darkness and screaming terror that would go skittering across the floor in search of another host. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to get rid of the image in her mind of her lifeless body on the bed, blood dripping out of her mangled corpse as Chloe slept beside her, unaware.

_ Stop it. You’re fine. _

Denial was a big thing for Max. It was a comfortable thing. If you just ignored something long enough, it would go away, right?

**_Never_ ** _ Maxine. _

But tonight was a little different. She was latching onto one phrase she’d said a long time ago in an alternate world. In a world that couldn’t exist anymore because she’d fixed it by killing William. She was as much of a murderer as Nathan Prescott or Mark Jefferson. 

“Max, it’s not your fault,” Chloe mumbled, scooting a little closer and gently resting her forehead on Max’s. 

She was warm.

Her breath was not especially pleasant as all sleepy breath is, but it was hers. 

She was alive. 

She was something to hold onto. 

“Are you so sure about that?” Max asked, bitterness tainting her words. 

“‘M sure. Keeps me up sometimes too, you know that.”

Max didn’t really want to talk about exactly what was bothering her, but it wasn’t the storm, not really. Not this time. It was… that there was some part of her that didn’t feel resolved at all. It would creep into her mind in the middle of any given October night, as it was want to do. Only during October. Only when everything in the world felt so tenuous.

She would remember the person that people thought she was in that other timeline. She would remember the version of her that stared back at her with angry, hollow eyes. She would remember the viciousness inside of her that threatened to destroy her. 

She would remember the mazes. 

She would remember the museums.

She would remember being tortured by her own mind.

And that was something that she couldn’t explain to anyone. 

Max watched Chloe, and Chloe watched her for a time, her eyes closing a little longer every time she had to blink until they didn’t open again. Chloe’s breathing deepened, and Max felt her own slow. 

She loved to look at Chloe, and that wasn’t just because she was super fucking gay. She wished she could commit more to her… physically, but something just kept popping up every time they started to get a little more inside the fabric. Something would keep Max from being able to just get on with it. She would panic. She would fritz out. She would impulsively rewind, and Chloe would  _ know _ . It probably had something to do with her expression or her sweaty anxiousness, but Chloe would still know.

Max could fantasize all day long, but that wouldn’t make it any easier. When Chloe touched her, she couldn’t handle it. It wasn’t a revulsion  _ because of _ Chloe. It was a… panicky fear that she’d developed after the dark room incident. Jefferson never did anything to her, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t afraid of it at the time. That didn’t mean that it hadn’t wounded her beyond belief. 

Chloe kept telling her she needed to get help, but Max didn’t know what kind of help she could get without people calling her crazy and locking her up in a loony bin for at  _ least _ a weekend.

Max didn’t even realize when she fell asleep. 

“Max.”

Max looked around, but she wasn’t sure where she was. She couldn’t make out her surroundings too well, but every now and then, in the darkness, she saw impressions of things she  _ might _ have seen. Blackwell’s girl’s bathrooms. The swimming pool where she’d had a religious experience seeing Chloe in her underwear. The junkyard where they’d found Rachel’s body. The diner. The streets. The wreckage. The-

“Max.”

Max looked around, pulling her arms around herself, and started walking. 

Locker maze. 

Not surprising. She was here a lot. Her brain threw her into incomprehensible mazes so fucking much that this was old hat.

Still, the way the soles of her shoes squeaked, the way everything seemed to close around her with every inhale, the way the linoleum gave a little every time she took a step...

“Max, come here.”

The voice seemed to be coming from inside her head. Of course it did; it had no real voice of its own. It was more an impression that compelled her rather than something that actively called to her. She let her feet keep moving her along the path she was drawn to. She learned to just let the nightmares play themselves out and was aware enough to just let it happen… or so she told herself.

She could faintly hear her heart beating too quickly, and irrational thoughts started slipping through the filters of her mind, a part of her thinking in nightmare logic rather than knowing-this-is-a-dream logic. Sweat prickled under her arms and made her shirt stick to her back. Her hair tickled her forehead and made her nose itch. 

Someone else was breathing in her ear. 

“Maxine.”

“Don’t call me that,” Max felt herself say out loud, bristling at the name and forgetting she was supposed to be hiding just long enough to get the attention of Them, whoever they were. The ones hunting her, waiting to string her up with hooks between her achilles and her tibia so they could cut from her pelvis to her sternum. So they could watch as her guts fell out of her body while she was still alive. 

It’s a dream, stupid, she told herself to steady her hands. She shouldn't have had to ground herself. 

She turned a corner and a sharp pain cut through her upper left arm near her shoulder. A tree branch made of knives protruded from one locker numbered 224. 

Max was bleeding. 

“ **_Maxine_ ** .”

“Stop it!” she loudly shouted again at no one in particular.

_ They _ were coming after her now that she'd cried out more than once, and she went to run, pulled by that same force she couldn't place. She knew not to look at Them. Her shoes were gone. The linoleum had turned to shards of glass, and wind roared like The Storm. Panic swelled and she stumbled out into an open area - Blackwell Academy’s courtyard -  where the air lashed at her exposed arms. She had nowhere to hide except-

She ran to the dorms and pulled on the handles of the doors, jiggling them uselessly. First, they were locked, then vines seeped from the cracks of the doors and laced around the handles before transforming into rusted chains with a single note on them. 

_ If you weren't such a bitch, we might let you in (: -Rachel _

She felt a scream bubbling up just below her sternum in the same place she always did. But Their flashlights saw her. Their flashlights exposed her. 

She wheeled around, seeing half a dozen forms running for her. People from her old life. People from Blackwell. Some of them stared into her with their glassy, dead eyes. Others stared at her blankly with gouged out holes where their eyes should have been. 

She was cold.

She wasn’t wearing clothes anymore.

She couldn’t move and shorted out entirely - her mind unable to process even the most obvious things. All that she could piece out were lights shining in her face. Shining in her eyes. Shining deep into her soul. 

She knew how a deer caught in traffic felt.

They were coming for her.

No, they were here. 

She couldn’t move.

Shining and…

Darkness. 

But Max couldn't  _ move _ . Couldn't  **_breathe_ ** . 

Couldn't-

Max pushed through the paralysis and swiped her arm, but it resisted the material she was encased in. Earthy smells filled her nose and… so did decay. 

She moved again, but this time she touched something else - a waxy thing that her fingers dug into and through like raw chicken. 

The smell got so fucking much worse. 

“Let me go, Max,” called out a voice that Max had only heard on video recordings before. Of course it was Rachel. Who else would it be?

Max let go of the… body… and panic started eating at her again. She fought against her encasement and dug her fingers into the moist material around her, trying to claw upward from… wherever she was. 

Pattering broke the deafening silence. 

Pattering like rain.

Pattering like… a shower on tile. 

Wetness slapped down on Max’s head, and she blinked a few times, the last bringing her somewhere else. She sat in the shower of Blackwell’s dorm. She thought she might be sick and was seized with wretching. Her vomit was made of black dirt and worms that splattered onto the white tile of the Blackwell dorm showers. Dirt sloughed off of her and exposed her flesh again, and she trembled. The water was cold. The tile was cold. She was cold. 

“Max?”

Max looked up and saw Chloe’s outline on the other side of the shower curtain, and the tension in her chest eased a little.

“Just a second,” she called and reached for the water dial to turn the heat up. 

The knob wasn't there, only a hole with one eye peeking through. When she spotted it, it moved away, and Max thought she could see the trace of a close-cut beard. She knew who it was. 

She wanted out of the shower. 

She pulled back the curtain and stepped out, drawing it behind her even though she might be seen by others. Chloe wasn't out there. 

Instead of the usual dorm bathroom, a full length mirror stared back at her in the middle of a white, featureless space. 

“Max.”

The voice called again, but the Max-in-the-mirror’s mouth moved. That’s when Max realized that it wasn’t a voiceless voice. It was  **_her_ ** voice calling her from somewhere else and convincing her to keep moving forward. Keep moving through the nightmare. 

“We need to talk, Max,” said the clothed Max, stepping out of the mirror and offering a hand. 

Max didn’t take that Max’s hand. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Why do you keep denying me, Max?”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Max said again, trying to keep her voice firm while backing up into the shower and reaching for the shower curtain to cover herself, but neither the shower nor the curtain were there anymore. She looked around, dread deep and heavy in her chest. 

“Stop ignoring me, Max,” the fake-Max snapped, her eyes boring into Max’s. 

The mirror wasn't there anymore. 

The back wall was gone. 

Black water slushed from where the back wall had been and just barely covered Max's feet. It sounded like the shoreline. 

Max tried to cover herself with her arms and turned her body to the side as if that would help. 

A dog growled. 

“Stop doing this to yourself, Max,” the fake-Max’s voice was a little softer, and she offered her hand again. “Stop throwing us away. Stop throwing  **_yourself_ ** away.”

Shame bloomed in Max’s chest and manifested as a full body blush, and she dropped her arms but kept her head turned to the side and away from the fake-Max. She didn’t reach out. 

“Why are you so afraid of me? Every year I come out and try to talk to you, and all you do is push me back down. You push me back down into the dirt and the quiet and the darkness. Why don’t you want me, Max? Why don’t you want Maxine? Why would you kill part of yourself?”

She didn't know. She didn't know. She didn't  **_know._ **

“You're not real,” Max mumbled. 

The side walls fell away and inky blackness sloshed in even more, creeping up to her thighs. 

Maxine smiled tightly, her lips just barely tilting up at the corners. “ **_I’m_ ** not real? You want to know how  **_real_ ** I am?”

In a blink, Maxine stood just as naked as Max herself, but Maxine was everything that Max wished she could be. Instead of being a flat-chested, scrawny, soft nerd who ate garbage day in and day out, Maxine was a little more toned and obviously ate some fruits and veggies. She looked to be in better shape. Her skin was better - no weird acne. Her shapes looked less like mushy stovepipes and more like a runner’s body. Her hair wasn’t frizzy in the slightest and had no cowlicks. 

She was an ideal version of Max, and she exuded raw confidence and power.

But Max knew her. 

She was a vicious person. 

She would sacrifice anyone to save herself and to put herself first. 

“That’s why you hate her, you know,” purred Maxine’s voice, but Maxine no longer stood there. Victoria Chase stood before Max with her characteristic pout and her resting bitch face. In another blink, Rachel Amber stood in the same outfit she’d seen in most of Chloe’s pictures. “And you fear her because she’s who you want to be.” Maxine took a step closer and shifted back to herself. “So why are you so afraid of me?”

Max didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything. 

Maxine drew closer, close enough for Max to smell Chloe’s perfume on Maxine’s skin. The smell only got stronger until it made Max’s eyes water. When she blinked the tears away, Chloe stood before her for a moment, watching and waiting. Max knew what she wanted from the look in her eye. She couldn’t deliver on that want. That desire. 

When she blinked again, Maxine stood there with a smug expression - the kind of smug expression that Max had seen in pictures of the alternate timeline where she, Max, had been a huge bitch and intimate friends with the Cool Kids. She didn’t want this part of her. 

“You’re not me,” she managed to say, even though her voice was thick. 

Maxine came even closer, pressing her body ever so lightly against Max’s. “I  _ am _ .”

Max felt her heart flying in her chest, and she tried to back away, but the water coalesced around her legs and prevented her from moving. 

“You need to accept us, Max. You’re tearing yourself apart,” Maxine said, looking over Max’s body critically but… sympathetically? “The quicker you accept us - come to terms with us - the better things will end up, and I think you know that.”

“I-” Max started and stopped herself. She wasn’t about to have this conversation with her subconscious. Her id. 

The gel that trapped her legs started to rise. 

“Max.” Maxine’s voice wasn’t harsh anymore. 

Her eyes were half closed, and a blush crept over her cheeks and feathered her chest and the tops of her ears. 

“I don’t… want to become… someone else.”

The viscous liquid stopped rising.

“You won’t…” Maxine sighed, pressing more firmly against Max’s body, and Max could feel Maxine’s heartbeat on her own skin. She didn’t know that her dream self could  _ have _ a heartbeat. “The fear you feel…” Maxine lifted her arms just slightly and lightly grabbed Max’s upper arms. “The pain you carry…” Maxine traced her fingers the rest of the way up over Max’s shoulders and laced her arm’s behind Max’s neck. “You keep fighting a fight you can’t win alone. We’re not your enemy here.”

Max’s legs were growing weak, and if not for the substance holding her hostage, she might have collapsed. “I can’t use my powers anymore.”

Maxine shook her head and rested her cheek on Max’s shoulder. “They’re a part of you still, though, and you fear it.”

Max thought she was starting to understand, and the panicky sensations started becoming more muted as Maxine’s lips met her neck. 

She didn’t really understand what was going on here, but she  _ did _ know that… this was not unpleasant. “Max, you don’t have to keep being afraid,” Maxine whispered, lightly dragging her lips over the cup of Max’s ear.

Everything pitched backward, tilting in Max’s head, but she didn’t feel herself physically move despite knowing, somehow, that she was no longer standing nor was she in the featureless white room with the shore echoing in her ears. Instead, she was looking up at the ceiling in Chloe’s room with the warm weight of Chloe on her chest. Chloe looked up at her, smiling. 

Max smiled back, comfort seeping into her bones. The kind of comfort that Max didn’t know she needed. There was something about the way Chloe smiled that melted all of Max’s insides, but not in the horror movie kind of way. Looking at Chloe’s smile was like sitting in front of the fireplace on a snowy Christmas morning. 

Max closed her eyes, relishing the warmth of her girlfriend, but when she opened her eyes again, it was Maxine. 

Because of course it was. 

“Don’t you want this, Max?” She rolled just off to the side enough to gesture down at their bodies, legs tangled in naked happiness.

Max felt herself flush, but this time, she didn’t resist though she remained tense. 

The shore called again over the roar of the central heating unit, a conch shell echo fading in her mind. 

“What’s stopping you?”

Max let her body sink down onto the bed, but the bed had become that viscous black liquid and jiggled slightly like licorice jello. Did they even make licorice jello?  _ That _ would be the true nightmare. 

“I’m just scared,” Max sighed, letting the darkness take her and Maxine into its embrace. 

The weight of Maxine was gone for a moment, and Max just breathed in the liquid, waiting for the dream to turn nightmarish and waiting for the liquid to choke her in her sleep - to suffocate her and drown her. 

She couldn’t ignore this.

“Do you want me to help you?” Maxine’s voice called from everywhere, reverberating from inside Max’s mind, begging from the outside in a surround sound cloud about her head, and screaming from every muscle in her body. 

Max hung, half curled and suspended in liquid with her eyes closed, thinking to herself about everything that had happened over the course of the year like a movie reel. She knew that wasn’t the most reliable set of memory from a psych class she had to take one semester, but it didn’t matter here in this dream. Each memory was strung along on negative strips and inverted so that it was watching her instead of her watching it. The reel clicked familiarly even if the images were not. The sensations were all too familiar, though. Feeling out of place. Feeling like the world moved on around her and she was just wandering through it aimlessly. Feeling like a failure for pushing Chloe away. Feeling like an idiot for having her emotions get the better of her and lashing out. 

The fluid filled her lungs, but it did not drown her. 

And she spoke.

“Yes.”

Things moved quickly. The fluid drained away from her and she lay in the middle of a field that she didn’t know. Grass tickled her naked body. Birds chirped. She closed her eyes, almost ready for what was next. 

The atmosphere changed, but Max didn’t open her eyes. 

Hands touched her, pawed at her like beggars in old stories grabbing at the hems of people’s robes. She tried to let her body give to those touches. Each hand felt different but not unpleasantly so. She even wanted to open her eyes to watch them touch her. She had no problem with getting handsy, and she felt herself begin rocking against their constant movement.

Their little delicate traces.

Their firm presses against her body.

Their pinches and scratches. 

The constant contact became more cohesive, more singular in nature. Less distinct but still pleasantly everywhere. Constricting but not restraining. 

“Open your eyes, Max,” Maxine’s firm voice commanded, and Max did, lifting her head just enough to look into Maxine’s eyes. 

They were in Max’s old dorm with Max laying flat on her back on the bed. The sensation of touch left her entirely, slipping away , and her body felt… cold and exposed. Something held her wrists fast to the bed. 

“Wh-”

Maxine leaned down and touched her forehead against Max’s and blinked slowly at her. Slight dizziness beset Max for a brief moment, and she felt the need to move her legs. She felt the need to get a little closer. Between blinks, Max saw Maxine’s eyes shift and change shape and color to those she knew. 

Victoria. 

Kate. 

Chloe. 

Rachel. 

Stella. 

Dana. 

Chloe. 

Rachel. 

Chloe.

Her own.

Max didn’t feel the need to ask questions anymore as she found herself getting lost in those shifting eyes. She’d pushed down a lot of feelings over the years. 

Though she couldn’t move her hands at all, she found herself reaching up to Maxine, reaching up to close the slight gap between them. To feel Maxine’s body against her own. To feel her heart and her breath and her breasts and her… everything. She wanted to feel  _ everything _ . 

Max tilted her head back, trying to make contact with Maxine’s lips, and Maxine didn’t stop her like Max thought she might. Instead, Maxine pushed forward and drove Max’s head back into the mattress, her lips hot and feverish - her body connecting with Max’s with humming energy of tense anticipation.

Literally humming. 

The slick warmth of… whatever… still weighed Max’s wrists down to the bed, but her legs found their way up and around Maxine’s torso, pulling Maxine closer and closer to her, making contact with her and gasping into Maxine’s mouth. 

Maxine pulled back and looked hard at Max but nodded to herself as if pleased. Her chest heaved with heavy breaths and excitement that was catching quick just below Max’s navel, spreading smoldering warmth in a way that she’d felt so many times with Chloe but had been too afraid to-

Chloe was now straddling Max. “You’re in for a weird time, party girl,” she laughed, kissing Max’s neck.

The bindings that held Max’s wrists now slithered across her stomach and coiled like tendrils, snaking up her body and around her breasts, pressing against her and squeezing slightly and then tightly, eliciting a lengthy sigh from Max’s lips. She finally looked down and saw that, across her body, tendrils made from the viscous material from earlier roved her, leaving a temporary residue that faded in seconds. 

But she wanted to feel more. 

The tendrils responded to her very thought, and Kate Marsh’s breathy little laugh drew her attention back up to where Chloe had been, but Kate was gone in half a second like she’d been nothing but a trick of the light. 

The softly moving tendrils became thicker, more like squishy ropes, and coiled under her body and around her torso, squeezing her in syncopated rhythms. She was actually pretty sure that the thing that bound her was essentially a living form of those sex toys she’d been too embarrassed to buy but were super interested in. 

“You should tell me about those when you wake up,” dream-Chloe said, smiling. 

Max started to open her mouth, but another unseen tendril stroked the inside of her thigh slowly, waving back and forth like an anemone blown by the water currents. 

The scene around her shifted, and she lay in Chloe’s bed again, but the ceiling was gone in favor of a deep, starry night. Maxine pushed the hair away from Max’s face, which was becoming a little sticky with sweat. In fact, her whole body was coated in a shimmering sheen, and she closed her eyes at the cooling touch. She was starting to feel dizzy again, but more than dizzy, she wanted to touch Maxine. She wanted to kiss her unrestrained. She wanted Maxine to touch her back. 

Maxine smiled her feline smile. 

Max’s thighs were next to be bound, and she felt her body tilt up and sag under the weight of gravity as inky black tendrils as dark as night suspended her and caressed her. 

“Max,” Maxine’s voice called.

Max could only answer with a groan as the vines of darkness slid over her ever so gently. 

“Max,” Maxine called again, and Max looked up to watch her with her left hand on her left breast and her right hand poised just over her crotch. 

One of Maxine’s fingers slid over herself, and the tendrils responded in kind on Max’s own body, slowly - so achingly slowly. 

The walls fell away again. 

The field was shrouded by a dark, moonless night. 

The field melted away into an endless black. 

Save for Maxine, her eyes half closed, and her hands roving her pale body, the gel-vines moving in tandem on Max’s body with her motions.

A tendril traced down Max’s spine and slid around her waist to slip over her again and rub just a little more firmly. A moan caught in Max’s throat before the cords around her thighs started moving again, the soft conical tips rubbing at her skin and drawing ever closer to being  _ inside _ of her. 

Watching Maxine added another layer onto everything else that was happening to her. Watching herself with her sex eyes and her perfectly pouty open mouth made Max want more. Made her want to hear the sounds she would make, though she knew what they sounded like already. She wanted to hear it all. 

“So don’t hold back?” Maxine asked, her breath hitching between her words as she scratched down her torso, leaving pink little lines behind. 

The tendrils on Max’s own body mimicked the motion but left no marks. 

Max shivered. 

Then, she couldn’t see. 

A cloth had been draped over her eyes and tied around her head. Her hands moved from being held firmly at her sides to behind her back. She felt herself go horizontal, picked up by these jelly tentacles and turned in a way that would make her, if she’d been awake, on her back. Her legs bent like she was hanging off the side of a bed. The tendrils parted away from her most sensitive areas, and she groaned, the warmth of them leaving her cold for just a moment before a too-warm pressure found her and parted. And then, another type of pressure, presumably Maxine’s tongue, dragged along Max. 

The shout that had been building under Max’s sternum came out in a long whine.

Maxine repeated the movement with a considerably loud moan, and Max tried to squirm and shiver, but the restraints held fast, and she found herself completely unable to move anything except her head. She could pull against the restraints, but they did not budge. They only began to pulse slightly at her agitation. 

The tendrils stopped moving for a moment, and Maxine’s attempts paused, leaving Max panting with intermittent sighs, whines, and moans. Eternity stretched before Max in this fresh new hell of suspension before a wet, soft shape pressed against her, small like one of the tendrils, and pushed into her.

She convulsed with a breathy moan, and the tentacles that held her grew stronger. She could move now and thrashed with some kind of severity, and she  _ loved _ it. The tendril inside of her grew slowly, filling her more with every withdrawal, with every push in, and lips caught her own. She moaned into that mouth - it didn’t matter whose mouth it was - and called out name after name. It didn’t matter whose. She couldn’t tell anymore until she realized she was chanting “Maxine” like she was trying to summon a god. 

The tendrils stroked her body and touched her, pressed her, filled her, and rubbed her as she squirmed. Against her open lips a tongue pressed just slightly, and Max took it in her mouth eagerly - the haze growing thicker - and moaned against that mouth that moaned against hers. It was Chloe’s voice. She knew because she’d heard Chloe in the shower before. She knew. 

The rhythm increased steadily, and she knew she was saying nonsense at this point. She was ready. Ready to scream. Ready to burst. 

She could hear herself chanting, “More.”

And those tendrils gave her more, writhing against her body as quickly as her muscles could twitch, and the one inside of her kept an unimaginable pace. It writhed inside of her, changing size, changing shape, changing with her every demand. She wanted to be  _ filled _ . She wanted to-

“Max,” Maxine moaned. 

“Maxine,” Max cried in return. Hearing her own name almost-

She couldn’t take it anymore. 

She felt her whole body convulse, clamping down like she’d drawn herself into a ball, and the gel on her squeezed with rhythms only her own body could manage. Inside of her, heat exploded and matched her movements, her thrusts and her screams. 

And she did scream.

Her body recovered much more quickly than her mind, and she felt herself start sagging, unable to move, before the actual realization hit her that she’d just basically done herself. 

The bindings were kind enough to rest her on a bed in the middle of the space, and she twitched, feeling incredibly empty now that whatever it had been was gone. 

Not even Maxine was around. 

“Max?” A voice called. 

Max looked around. It wasn’t her own voice this time. 

“Hey, Max? Are you alright?”

Max blinked a few times and stared at her apartment’s ceiling for a long moment before she felt someone shaking her arm - Chloe. “Max, babe, you gotta talk to me. Are you alright?”

Max turned, breathing hard, and looked at Chloe for a long moment. Chloe looked… really worried. 

“You just started going nuts over there, and I tried to wake you up, but you didn’t hear me, and holy shit.”

“Um… Sorry, Chlo.” Max felt her sweaty face get hot. 

“Max, are you alright?”

Max looked at Chloe for another long moment. “Um… Wasn’t a nightmare.”

Temporary outrage seized the blonde before realization dawned in her eyes. “Oh… OH. Holy shit. Oh… Um…”

“Hey, Chloe?”

“Um… Yeah, babe?”

“You wanna do it?”

  
  



End file.
